Mining colonies: Les Liégeois Zwartberg

As a result of the successful exploratory drilling in As by André Dumont in 1901 several mining concessions were granted in 1906 by the Belgian state with the aim of exploiting the Campine coal basin. The mining concession Les Liégeois (literally: them from the city of Liége) was granted to a consortium of the Cockerill company, two mines from Liége (Espérance et Bonne Fortune and Patience et Beaujonc) and three local landowners (Théodore Masy, director of three Walloon mines, the industrialist Wittouck and lieutenant general Emile Thorn). The new mining company was named Société Anonyme Charbonnages des Liégeois en Campine. The company name chosen makes quite clear in no uncertain terms who was in charge in exploiting the coal in this part of Belgium.

At first the plan was to found the colliery in the village of As. The village council decided against this and so the mining operation was transferred to a site on the heath between Hengelhoef and Waterschei where during the nineteenth century the Cockerill company had tested its cannons and steel gun cupolas. This testing ground lay near an 80 m high hill known as the Zwarte Berg (literally: Black mountain). This hill would later name both the mine and the mining colony. Until the 1920s though, both mine and colony would be known under its French name as Les Liégeois.

Work on the colliery buildings started in 1910, as did the sinking of two pits. In 1909 a railwaytrack had been laid to link the site via the neighbouring mine at Waterschei to the regional railway Hasselt - Maaseik at As. The first housing for workers was also built in As. The company had bought land here when they had planned their mining seat at As. This Cité Cockerill , constructed around 1910, consisted of 36 houses and no longer exists.

Right from the onset the mining company had to contend with an enormous shortage of potential workers. The scarce inhabitants were scattered around small hamlets and also lacked the skills needed. Employing and housing people from elsewhere was part of planning the mining activities at Zwartberg. Technical staff and engineers were brought in from Wallonia. The rest of the workforce was found in the rest of the Campine region (both in Belgium and the Netherlands) as well as Germany and Poland.

Around 1915 work started on building housing near the colliery. Both a large villa for the mines executive and villas for the engineers were erected directly south of the colliery site. South of the railway housing for the workers was built in the Cité Sud or Zuiderwijk. After 1919 work on the Cité Nord or Noorderwijk was started. At the same time the Cité Sud was completed.

A schematic drawing of the Zwartberg suburb that is located in both Genk and Houthalen.

The colliery with its trim of villas and two mining colonies only makes up a small portion of the urbanized area. The mine was located near two large estates owned by the aforementioned T. Masy and E. Thorn. On another large landholding the suburb of Houthalen-Oost was developed after WW2. Over the course of several decades small and medium sized housing estates were built adjacent to the mining colony. These mining colonies have been dwarfed by the later developed suburban area.

The urbanized area around Zwartberg now consists of several suburban developments and housing estates including the old mining colonies Cité Sud (2) and Cité Nord (3). Next to these we find the former colliery site now a business park (1) and the strip of villas (4).To the north we find the Luciebois (5) and Eikenberg (6) estates. At the edge of these large estates we find the former storage and settling tanks (7) for the waste water and the old spoil heap (8) of the mine. On the Park van Genk estate in Houthalen Houthalen-Oost (9) was developed, later expanded with the Hutte estate (10) and Nieuw Limburg estate (11). The area around Peerdsmeer (12) was also built over. Next to the Cité Sud the Nieuw Driehuizen estate (13) and Hoevenzavel estate (15) were built. On the site of the former velodrome the Hengelhoef-Noord estate (14) was built.

At the beach

 My work takes me to the nicest places. Some years ago I designed a holiday park in Zeeuws Vlaanderen. As I was there to assess the first phase of completion, I couldn't resist the short stroll to the beach. What looks like a natural landscape of dunes is actually a huge dyke covered in  sand, beachgrass, sea-buckthorn and wild privet. The beach on the North Sea is also less than natural; it has been stabilized by large wave breakers and is replenished every spring with fresh sand from the seabed. The people enjoying themselves here will probably be unaware of this all and simply see a landscape typical of the coastal region of Flanders.

Mining colonies: mixed vernacular in the garden suburb of Waterschei

The earliest housing built for workers consisted of Mulhouse Quadrangles that were situated to the side of the colliery site in two long rows. The buildings have a distinct Walloon character in their architecture.

At the centre of the first mining colony at Waterschei a large executive villa (on the right) was built set within a large private park. Next to it on either side of the Parklaan two large villas were erected for the mining engineers in charge of sinking the pits. They are mirror images of each other. Both are built in the same Walloon vernacular as the Mulhouse Quadrangles; brick with the typical bands of natural stone and slated roofs. The white rendered villa  sets itself apart rather deliberately, both in architecture as in placement within the grid.

 

 

The massive building of the mining seat was built to impress with a fortress like tower and large central hall. It housed the several offices, technical department, changing rooms and baths.

The villas that were built along the Onderwijslaan and André Dumontlaan either follow the English vernacular akin to the architecture of Raymond Unwin (on the left), or display an ornate variation on Flemish brick vernacular combined with the projecting eaves of the Walloon vernacular.

In a small section of the garden suburb buildings have been built with a strong English influence. They are typed as cottage style buildings in Belgium, although they are better characterized as arts and crafts inspired.

The so-called cottage type buildings are to be found in the northeastern part of the Cité André Dumont. The belt road (Ceintuurlaan) forms the backbone of the garden suburb and consists of several sections, all planted with large trees in wide green verges.

Another example of the "cotage style" buildings with their partially rendered facades and composite roofs. Most are four family dwellings called Vierwoonst in Belgium. By varying the surfaces executed in either brick or light render corners are emphasized.

Next to the church a villa in the so-called cottage style stands in a lush garden. The Church of Christ the King itself dates from 1934 and stands out with its yellow brick facade. It was meant to stand out. It does so not only by virtue of its colour, but also the style of architecture implemented is rather austere and almost modernist in its plasticity and construction (reinforced concrete modules).

The large school building houses both a primary school, a kindergarten and a crafts school. The building is currently (2013) being refurbished. Its fort like appearance supports the ideal of a sheltered learning environment for children. The building has a large covered gate  and even a tower, making it a castle for learning.

To house the single workers and later the immigrants who came to Waterschei without their family the colliery built several hostels, called Hotel. One is now a mosque, the others are being converted to apartments. They are all built in a similar style. Here the Hotel Continental (completed 1925).

 

The short terraces are all situated along the winding streets along a fixed building-line with the occasional block set back according to Unwinesk garden city principles. This small church sits at the point where three curved streets meet and open up into a large expanse of grass planted with trees. The building is both known as the Josef Slipyj Centre and the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Saint John the Baptist.

 

At the corners special building types were used to strengthen the spatial composition. These buildings either folded inward (such as this example) to hug a corner, or folded outward to emphasize a curve.

Most houses are short terraces of four family houses, some are detached (right) or semidetached (left). Occasionally there are also terraces of three at Waterschei. These date mainly from after 1928.

These buildings along the Hoevenzavellaan conform to the overall type built in the garden suburb at Waterschei. They are part of a later extension between this central axis of the Zwartberg colliery and the belt road of the Cité André Dumont.

 

The buildings south of the Onderwijslaan vary from large semidetached to large detached properties in the earlier "cottage style" or the later vernacular style (left). These buildings housed middle management of the Waterschei colliery.

The buildings in the 1930s extension south of the Onderwijslaan are of the same type as the buildings in the western extension. The gardens are smaller though.

The buildings in the post-WW2 Tuinwijk-Zuid are similar in style to the neighbouring 1930s neighbourhood, albeit somewhat simplified in the detailing. The electricity building has been built as an ornate miniature stronghold complete with tower. From this tower the cables distributed the electricity throughout the neighbourhood. The mine company provided all the houses with electricity right from the beginning.

One of the iconic roundabouts in the Tuinwijk-Zuid. The whole is very formal in layout only the simplest of means are utilized to provide a little bit of variation such as these roundabouts with houses at an angle and the middle block of a row a terraces being placed further back from the road.

Mining colonies: Tuinwijk-Zuid Waterschei

On the Stalense Heide the Waterschei garden suburb was extended after WW2. This was done by extending the central avenue to meet the extended avenue of Zwartberg at an older road that once ran across the heath (now the Emiel van Dorenlaan is part of this older route). This extension was aligned with the central avenue and consists of 3 parallel streets at a right angle to it. The streets are connected by side streets, although these have no building on them. Where the side streets connect to the main streets a large roundabout has been put in place with a public garden or grass at its heart. The houses are mainly terraces with 4 dwellings. They are placed along the streets at regular intervals. At the roundabouts the houses have been placed at a 45^o angle. The whole setup is formal, but this is softened by the buildings that have varying details, roofs and facades.

The Tuinwijk-Zuid (1) is a formal neigbourhood directly south of the extended axis of the garden suburb of Waterschei. It was built in a single building campaign. North of the garden village large villas (2/3) were built along the extended Onderwijslaan. Between the Tuinwijk-Zuid and the Stalenstraat a number of bungalows (5) were built after 1960. The rest of the buildings (4) differ greatly in apperance and style. They were constructed between 1950 and 2000.

The Tuinwijk-Zuid was developed immediately after the war in 1947-48. The street names are commemorative in nature Bevrijdingslaan (Liberation Avenue) and 14 Septemberlaan (the date Genk was liberated). The backbone of the neighbourhood is the central axis formed by the Verbindingslaan (literally: Connection Avenue). The side streets have no separate name, as there are no houses on them. The layout is reminiscent of the parallel lanes with Mulhouse Quadrangles. The spacing is indeed similar. It seems like the street pattern was to be extended further west. This never happened though. Instead we see a mixed neigbourhood consisting of the typical urban sprawl along former paths and preexisting roads. This urban sprawl together with the post-war neighbourhood and the 1930s neighbourhood behind the hospital are now called Tuinwijk-Zuid (Garden village South).

Taking a closer look at the morphology we see two old routes (shown in orange) and a slightly skewed block of cultivated former heathland divided into broad strips (shown in yellow). The large garden suburb Cité André Dumont bordered on this large block of land. The Tuinwijk-Zuid crosses into it and alters the alignment. The new pattern of three parallel streets connects to the preexisting paths and roads. The two main avenues of Zwartberg and Waterschei (in red) meet at an older road. In the 1970s a motorway was constructed with a new express road connecting Zwartberg to Genk via Winterslag (shown in violet). Because of this express road older streets were dissected and eventually parts of old routes were discontinued.

The garden suburb at Waterschei in Genk has been developed out of several neighbourhoods all typical for their period, but still the whole makes for a beautifully conceived residential area reminiscent of English garden city examples.Tuinwijk-Zuid differs in layout and building style. It makes up a small portion of the total garden suburb.